In a recent Deloitte survey of 1,000 white-collar workers, 94% of respondents said they would benefit from one thing: workplace flexibility, in the form of remote work and flexible hours. They cited the top advantages of such flexibility as “less stress/improved mental health” (43%) and “better integration of work and personal life” (38%).
Yet 80% also said a traditional work setting — “regular attendance at an office or working normal business hours” — was important for climbing the ladder. Another 30% said “potential consequences to their professional growth and lack of trust from leadership” would prevent them from utilizing the flexible opportunities they sought.
This data suggests that, despite introducing flexible work policies in greater numbers, leaders are not giving the initiatives adequate support. Employees remain nervous to embrace them, fearing that doing so will have a detrimental effect on their careers. Given that the future of work will be defined by flexibility — which boosts engagement, satisfaction, and retention — and given that 52% of respondents said the CEO or management has “the greatest impact on advancing flexibility within their organization,” leaders need to start paying attention. Here are three ways they can encourage their teams to adopt flexible work policies.
Practice Active Support & Trust
Among those with flexible work policies surveyed by Deloitte, just 48% had taken advantage of flex hours and just 41% had worked remotely. Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, has studied this phenomena before. The prevailing reason for not using flexible policies, she wrote with Marina Multhaup in the Harvard Business Review, is it resulted in “negative work consequences for employees, such as wage penalties, lower performance evaluations, and fewer promotions.” In other words, the same fears shared by the respondents to Deloitte’s survey.
It is vital, therefore, for leaders to assure employees that these repercussions will not occur at their companies. They can do so both by modeling the behavior themselves, and by supporting it through their words and actions. “Make sure you’re not signaling — either through subtle means (‘Oh, you’re leaving already? Must be nice!’) or through more direct consequences (like poor performance evaluations) — that employees should actually be working ‘normal’ hours,” Williams and Multhaup wrote.
Leaders should actively strive to create a culture of trust at their organizations, as well. They must accept it will be impossible to ensure employees are working — and must instead trust their teams to do their best. “Spending time and energy trying to monitor what your employee is doing every second of the day isn’t going to help anybody,” Williams and Multhaup wrote. “Our recommendation is to build trust with your employees from the beginning, and then trust them. If you feel you can’t trust your employees to work out of your sight, that’s a performance problem.”
Train Your Managers
Even if a company’s leadership is fully supportive of flexible work, managers and employers may not be. “Ironically, the greatest impediment to implementing flexible workplace initiatives may come from employees and midlevel supervisors,” stated an article from the Society for Human Resources. “An employee who shows up for work on time every day may resent employees who telecommute. A supervisor who is short-staffed may view the organization's flexible work arrangements as a trendy endeavor that hinders productivity.”
For Fast Company, sociologist Jane Parry agreed. “My own research found that line managers are the single biggest block on flexible work uptake,” she wrote. “And even where flexible work is supported, too often it is assumed that managers know the unknowable and can just run with new working practices. But without any investment being made in managers, flexible working arrangements are set up to fail.”
Leaders should not only support flexible workers, therefore, but also the managers supervising them. They should educate managers on the myriad benefits of flexible work, and, according to Parry, provide “access to success stories and practical guidance, backed up by lots of leadership and peer support.” Leaders can also help managers establish clear guidelines, such as when team members will be available and how they will be reached. As Nida Sea wrote at Randstad RiseSmart, “Training managers and setting expectations for communication up front will increase your chances of implementing a productive and successful [flexible work] program.”
Focus on Results, Not Face Time
The average worker, according to a small U.K. survey, spends less than three hours each day being productive — and devotes the remaining five hours to activities such as checking social media, reading the news, and socializing with colleagues. Academic research, as well, has suggested that more hours do not lead to more output. By now, it should be clear that presence does not equal productivity, yet many organizations continue to value “face time” when it comes to their employees.
Thus, in order to make flexible work policies succeed, leaders must initiate a change in metrics: toward an environment that prioritizes results, rather than time spent in the office. “Flexible work demands a shift away from seeing productivity in terms of being present for fixed working hours,” Parry explained. “Companies (and managers) need to devise better measures of output: has a project been completed within schedule, did the team work well together, is the report of a high quality? These are much more effective yardsticks of success than whether staff clock in at 9 a.m. each morning.”
One company that has done this successfully is Envato, a completely-distributed organization with more than 300 employees. “One of the biggest myths about remote working is that people won’t work hard enough,” the company told Remote.co. “In fact, the opposite is often true… [I]t’s fairly easy to spot when a team member is not pulling their weight. At Envato we focus on results, not how many hours someone is sitting at their desk. Outputs are more important than inputs!” The approach seems to be working, as Envato is valued at more than $1 billion.
Deloitte’s recent survey demonstrated the demand for remote work, as well as its benefits: 33% of respondents said work flexibility would increase their job satisfaction and morale, and nearly 30% said it would increase their overall productivity or efficiency. Flexibility could, therefore, almost be considered a business imperative — and, based on the data, it needs leadership involvement to succeed. “Leaders can drive well-being within their organization by taking an inclusive approach to work flexibility and offering options that meet a variety of diverse needs,” said Terri Cooper, chief inclusion officer for Deloitte. “Through adaptable programs and supportive leadership, professionals will feel empowered to use flexible work options without fear of consequence.”
Forbes
